One of the guys in the office had an interesting question today: "Do you have insurance for your cell phone?"
Nope. Not one person. Not one person any of us knew, either.
Now, I should point out that there are big differences between insurance, which cell phone providers offer, and a warranty, which SquareTrade offers. The biggest difference is this: insurance payments never end. You'll pay your insurance bill every month, from now until the day your phone dies (and, we've heard, sometimes longer if their billing department's not on the ball). As opposed to a one-time flat fee for a SquareTrade warranty.
Anyway as you might imagine, we got a little curious about the subject. Everyone's friend Jimmy (who also runs a blog for our sellers) did a little research by grabbing Verizon's Asurion cell phone insurance policy for a Motorola Razr V3, and he found a few interesting tidbits.
First, a SquareTrade warranty with Accidental Damage Protection is 1/3 the price of Verizon's policy over the same three year period.
That's pretty bad, but then there are the little things... they don't cover normal wear and tear or mechanical failure, the twin bedrocks of our warranty. In all fairness, we both require you to send the phone in when you make a claim, and Verizon does cover loss, which we don't. But to claim on a lost phone, you've got to submit a police report to them or you're out of luck. So if you can't find your phone and think maybe you just accidentally left it at the office, that's going to be an interesting few conversations with your boss and the local 5-0.
And once everything goes through, assuming Verizon finally approves your claim after a few weeks (5 business days for us), they'll send you a used replacement phone.
Yep. You don't even get a new phone for your trouble. They'll send you a refurbished phone "equivalent" to the one you sent in... possibly not even the same model. No, you don't get to choose what you get. No, you don't even get to pick the color. You get what they send you, and that's it.
Whereas we give you cash money, and let you decide what you want to do with it.
Here's the funny part... stellar insurance like that isn't even available on some smart phones, like the iPhone. On the plus side, everyone we know who has an iPhone has an iPhone warranty, with Accidental Damage Protection. Guess where they got it from.
That guy had a follow-up question for our corner of the office, too. "Anyone have a SquareTrade warranty for their cell phone?"
A lot of hands went up.
Square Trade warranty, iPhone insurance, cell phone insurance, cell phone warranty, cellphone insurance
